The new normal for many full-service country clubs puts the emphasis on full. Over time, the Philadelphia Cricket Club has enhanced its already championship-caliber golf program so as to please the avid golfer while also broadening golf’s appeal and making it more accessible and fun to the occasional or recreational player. But the upward trajectory is just as substantial and dramatic in other areas of club life with premium facilities providing the backdrop for squash, paddle, fitness and all the other fun stuff that members and their families want to do.
The Philadelphia Cricket Club is on a roll with a multi-million golf course renovation just completed and a similarly scaled facilities improvement project also nearly complete. As GM Tim Muessle puts it in his understated way, “We have a lot of facility.”
The club’s inventory includes: two campuses 4.5 miles apart; three clubhouses; golf aplenty: two 18-hole courses and one 9-hole course (on the site that hosted the U.S. Open in 1907 and 1910); tennis includes 23 lawn courts, 10 Har-Tru surface courts and platform facilities that feature a swanky warming hut (see picture); squash (Muessle says interest in this sport is “exploding”) is provided for with eight singles and two doubles courts. There is also a new fitness center and the eponymous cricket tradition.
The Philadelphia Cricket Club is big as clubs go, with more than 1,500 members. One is tempted to say that the big facility and abundant offerings prove the old adage “different strokes for different folks”—and maybe with the accent on “strokes.” The Cricket Club’s golfing crowd is an impressive lot. Muessle makes no bones about it: “We’re a golfing powerhouse in the area,” noting that club that has opened a golf course in each of the past three centuries and is scheduled to host the PGA’s Professional National Championship in 2015.
Outsiders may be tempted to speculate as to whether there is a bifurcated membership, with the golfing enthusiasts pursuing their passion at the Flourtown campus with its 36-hole golf complex and simple clubhouses, while the family crowd does everything else at the Chestnut Hill location. Separate but equal, right? Probably not. At least not at the Philadelphia Cricket Club.
Instead, this club is blazing a new trail: offering the tremendous choice and enviable efficiencies that come with a certain scale. But less obvious is the attractive intimacy and inter-connectedness that its size and facilities provide. We see clubs like the Philadelphia Cricket Club expanding boundaries in a way that allows it to transcend certain physical or geographical limitations. Here are just a few examples of how the Cricket Club does it:
Growing Golf: For all its avid golfers and their serious pursuit of the sport, the Philadelphia Cricket Club also cultivates and encourages newcomers. Muessle calls it “a pathway into golf.” Thus the 9-hole course, which was the original St. Martin’s 18-hole course that hosted the early U.S. Opens, is a quality play (several holes are essentially the same as they were in the U.S. Open) that is both unintimidating and historic, representing what is called a “parkside course,” noticeably different in style from modern courses with its cross bunkering and distinctive greens. It is a golf option that is simultaneously convenient and desirable. Muessle tells of a senior member, who never really “got” golf and was, therefore, largely dismissive and unsympathetic when it came to the club golfers’ eccentricities and obsessions—until relatively late in his own middle-age he found the “pathway into golf” mentioned by Tim, and now talks up his golf habit with the best of them.
Complementary Activities: Club members are not one-dimensional. Wine enthusiasts are often interested in food pairings. Fitness and training are highly compatible with recreational pursuits and are also a great social mixer that easily crosses generational lines. The Cricket Club has been adept at finding many of these adjacencies and then providing the facility investment, the staff support and the social lubricant to grow them into important and valued club offerings. The club, like many others in the Northeast and elsewhere has participated fully in the great resurgence in paddle tennis. Muessle observes that is how compatible it is with the golfing habit: it’s done in the winter months when accessibility to a golf course is much less likely; it retains golf’s small-group sociability and has its own version of the 19th hole. The paddle facilities are now a lot nicer than they once were—all consistent with the club’s “grow and evolve” philosophy.
Affinity groups: We hear a lot about the growing popularity the club within a club concept. The Cricket Club exemplifies this principle but is also pushing its boundaries, taking it to the next level. Jim Smith, the golf director, helps set up five to six golf trips annually that allow members to sample some of the best golf wherever it might be found. Ironically, tight-knit foursomes at the club start to co-mingle and socialize a good deal when out-and-about on these golfing excursions. Likewise with dining and wine tasting: people opt-in and opt-out (in some cases, with the aid of customized software) of groups and occasions both within the confines of the club and without. The gourmet club will soon embark on a trip to Charleston, S.C., with Executive Chef Ben Burger. Reciprocal arrangements with other clubs across the country further accelerate this trend.
Is it any surprise that in expanding its boundaries, the Philadelphia Cricket Club has succeeded in bringing on new members? As its improvements have rolled out, the club has taken in some 250 new members. It’s an historic and traditional club, to be sure, but one that decidedly points to the future.
Club Trends Winter 2015